It’s been 2 weeks since I was on the water, which felt like an eternity, so I was glad to get back in the saddle this weekend. My good buddy Matt Berg and I decided to fish the Full Throttle Tournament on Saturday. No pre-fishing this time as we both had work obligations on Friday. We went into the Tournament just expecting to have a fun day of fishing and hope that my normal milkruns of spots were still holding fish. On spot 1, Matt caught two 15 inchers within the first 10 minutes of fishing. In this tournament you can put 8 in the well and weigh your best 5. To get the monkey off our back, we boxed them both as I heard the slots were getting a little harder to find. That was certainly the case as we hit several other spots, but could only find bigger fish. The bite is still on however as we must have caught over 40 walleyes ranging from 18 to just under 28 inches
We did manage one more slot so with about 30 minutes to go, we had three in the well. We decided to hit 1 more spot and within a minute, Matt’s rod almost got ripped out of his hand! After a 6 or 7 minute fight we boated a beauty that I was sure was going to cross the 28 inch mark. As we laid it on the Judge ruler, we found it to be just a fingernail width under 28”. What a heartbreaker!
The slot fish bite proved to be tough for most as we still ended up in 8th place with only 3 fish. It was still a great day on the water and we had a ton of fun. As for tactics, we ran a mix of Jolly Roger Spinners and some of the new Jolly Roger Custom Shad Raps. The best spinner colors remained the same as my previous reports with Firebelly, Electric Perch, Baby Walleye and Sunrise Craw putting many fish in the boat. We found a lot of fish on top of the flats this week and back trolled the spinners with a mix of air injected crawlers and minnows at 1 MPH behind a 2 Oz Bouncer.
For the Shad Raps, we made them in several of the same colors as the Blades. The Electric Perch, Baby Walleye, Purple Haze and Fire Minnow were killers on leadcore. We deployed them both trolling just off the mudflats and also out in some basin areas. Most fish we found were suspended in about 25-28 feet so we ran 3.5 to 4 colors of lead in most cases at 2 MPH. The Shad Raps come in 15 different patterns are now available for purchase. These are custom painted No. 5 Glass Shad Raps (GSR5’s), and have the same indestructible finishes as our spinner blades.
Here is the Link:
http://www.jollyrogertackle.com/category_s/88.htm
Best of Fishing,
Shawn Flemming
Jolly Roger Tackle
Great run of tournaments for you this year. The lake still sounds like its a ton of fun as a variety of ways to catch walleyes. Leadcore, spinners, and basin trolling.
Those new Shads look very nice. Great work
Who sells these blades up by Mille lacs?
Right now, our products are only available online at:
http://www.jollyrogertackle.com.
Thanks
Thanks Calvin…yes we’ve been fortunate to have a good start to the Tournament Season. Thanks on the Shads as well. We have a limited supply and they’re going quick. We also have a great line of Custom Deep Down Husky Jerk 12’s (DHJ12’s) which we just added last fall and during the winter. These have been responsible for numerous hawgs all over the country as we’ve had to replenish our supplies of these many times already this season. Attached are some recent pics of some giants that fell victim to the DHJ’s. I didn’t get much time with these on Mille Lacs last year, but guys have been tearing it up with them on Green Bay and Errie so my plan this weekend is to deploy them and the Shad Raps on the Open Basin of Mille Lacs. Spinners are still going strong too though…tough decision on tactics right now!
Link to the Deep Husky’s
http://www.jollyrogertackle.com/category_s/86.htm
More pics of the Deep Husky Jerks:
Reached the max on photo’s for a post…here are the rest of the DHJ12’s:
on your spinner rigs do you run 2 single hooks or a treble or treble hooks?
All of our harnesses are 2 hook rigs tied on a 10 foot snell of Seaguar Red Label 15 lb Flurocarbon line with Gamakatsu Octopus Hooks. We use #4 hooks for the #3 and #4 Blade Harnesses and #2 hooks for the #5 blade harnesses.
Thanks,
Shawn Flemming